Everyone is on the tablet bandwagon: OLPC is now a $75 Android Tablet

Negroponte: One Laptop Per Child is now a $75 Android??Tablet

The former head of MIT’s Media Lab said the next OLPC device, the XO-3, would be a 9-inch tablet made by Marvell and running Google’s Android OS.

The first OLPC was an underpowered, ‘designed-by-committee’ laptop that cost at least double of what it was supposed to. ??Most importantly, didn’t adapt to the needs of the children who used it. ??For instance, it didn’t have a method for non-Latin characters to be input. ??It was also made of plastic and had moving parts that would often break in rugged environments.

At CES in January this year, that will change, according to Nicolas Negroponte.

The new OLPC devices will take the lead from Apple’s iPad but use Google’s (GOOG) Android OS, at least initially. ?? The keyboard will be virtual and be able to adapt to different languages.

No moving parts and solves language-specific keyboard issues by using a soft keyboard.

Allows for external keyboard and mouse — decent sized soft keyboards are fantastic, at least compared to small soft keyboards, but they just don’t cut it in comparison to the physical for touch typists.

It leverages from the new commodity components.

(Finally, I suspect that by the time this comes to market, a low end data connection will become standard.)